48 Hours of Late May Stuff on the Farm

Wednesday, I planted two dozen flowers (where more than two dozen of my flowers have died) then sowed zinnia seeds (where my last ones never germinated) and black-eyed susan and daisy seeds (where my hollyhocks failed to sprout). (That last one is particularly sad, as those seeds were a parting gift from a sweet, elderly woman in Young Ward whose hollyhocks I'd often praised.)

I planted in hope of course, just like I did several weeks ago, but a hope that now drifted sadly and repeatedly towards a vague wondering what exactly others seem to know and do that allows all they plant to thrive and why I must forever exist outside of that knowledge.

After planting, I headed over by the barn and discovered that Mike had thoughtfully hooked a long hose up for me before leaving for work. (I'd asked him, earlier that morning, if there was one over there anywhere. He'd told me where to look, but must have decided, before heading off, to find and attach it for me himself. Bless him.) 

I tromped through tall weeds and grass to each of the four apple trees we'd planted last year, the evergreen from our last Christmas at the rental (still in its tub and looking like it might not survive its needed planting), and the raspberries that could scarcely be seen at all and gave them all a good watering. (Not a speedy process due to the low water pressure over there.)

Then I made my way over a stack of railroad ties near the cow trough to search through grass, weeds and rolled up barbed wire for fence posts to mark the nearly hidden spots where each of our surviving linden seedlings (planted last fall) are trying to grow.

I trudged four posts over to the strip of lindens--wondering, before I'd made it halfway to them and as the posts felt increasingly heavy in my arms, how I would manage three more trips. But then Daisy came out and started up the 4-wheeler. We piled the remaining posts across her lap and she drove them over. 

I made my way slowly through all the green growth searching carefully for trees to place posts by. Daisy followed behind--pounding the posts in with the post driver. (I took my turn for a spell, but Daisy was horrified--on her father's behalf--by how tall I left them and insisted on driving my posts in further.) While she continued that grueling task, I hauled a five-gallon bucket of water to each and every tree.

Mike arrived home around 7:00, and I followed him into the back field to watch how we are to go about shutting canal gates and setting tarps to flood irrigate. We stood together--as the wind blew through all the overgrown greenness that is currently everywhere--and watched where the water ran, then tromped over to the house--hmming and calculating--and deciding that probably the water wouldn't reach above the porch. Still, to be sure, Mike left lights on out back and set an alarm for 3:00 am to check on things. 

The next morning, early, the neighbor who at times rents the pasture to run his herd, came over and told Mike of another spot he liked to set a metal gate to send the water towards the further reaches of the field. Mike pointed the shining metal out to me through the big window so I would know where to go and lift it back out if things ran too close to the house while he was at work. And we watched as Holly and Rosie curiously stepped through wet pasture and reached their muzzles in to drink from new watering spots. 

My day was full of errands and kids, so I only glanced out to make sure nothing was reaching the house, but when Mike got home, we realized all the rising pasture water was completely gone. Someone must have switched a gate and cut our turn short. (And with a raised eyebrow and an odd little thrill [the same type of thrill that makes me want to hear any drama Mike might have to share from the waterboard meeting ... while still not wanting to actually be at the waterboard meeting] I wondered if we had entered into water sharing politics!) (We texted the water master. No response. More interesting still! :))

Today I decided that my linden-marking posts blended in a bit more than I'd hoped with the fence and posts just behind them, so Mike helped me search the barn for cans of paint before he left for work, and I spray-painted the tops white--and when, looking at them, I still doubted whether the kids would see them all once I start sending them with buckets of water this summer, I gave Jesse a can of red spray paint and told him to add stripes. In the end, I also numbered them (hoping to assign tree watering by numbers so none get missed).

Can you see the tiny linden to the left of the post? Luckily it should only take 20 to 50 years for it to reach maturity. I guess I'm watering them for my grandkids. :( The willows grow faster though. And I think I can move some of the cottonwood saplings growing near the big ones already here on the farm. Those are fast growing. And we've got our Christmas tree to plant. And, despite being told they won't do well, I still want to try a maple somewhere--mostly for its fall leaves. Aspens would be fun too. But ... how to water everything? I already fear we will weary of the bucket hauling to the lindens along the driveway all summer.

Jesse striping my posts like candy canes. They do stand out more now. We will have no excuse to miss carrying buckets to a single tree! (And won't it be nice to eventually just see trees--rather than houses--here? In ... 50 years. [Cross fingers for 20 everyone!])

A tiny cairn I made on the driveway across from a linden Mike found that I'd missed (so I would remember where to take a post the next day).

We planted about 20 lindens last year. (Maybe a few were willows? Whatever we got for practically nothing at the Bear River bare-root tree sale). I think I currently have 16 accounted for. Well, 19, I guess, I found 3 that appear to be dead. Maybe there's one more out there. Fingers crossed. 

Anyway, I'm liking these farm tasks. I even cleared weeds and grass and made a spot for pumpkins just outside the big window (since the pumpkin hill from last year is covered in weeds about five feet high), however, I've watched the spot throughout the day. It gets almost no sun to speak of, so my work there might have been for naught. 

We shall see. 

Lots of experimenting going on these days. (Remember all the sunflowers I planted last year? Why didn't those take? Is it ... do I ... have a black thumb? Despite all my willingness and industry?)

Well, as I've said before, I'm glad I'm not planting things in order to survive the winter--or we would be in a sad state, I fear. (Not only because nothing I plant will grow but also because I'm planting primarily ... flowers. Even grown they aren't too filling. ;)) We need Mike around more. Things he plants seem to grow. I guess because he just ... knows they will. 

Mother's Day, "What Could I Have Done More for My Vineyard?", and an Announcement

Mike gave me this fun ring watch for Mother's Day. Isn't it delightful?

But perhaps even more generous of him: He gave me hours of labor. (And of making the kids labor.)

Between time constraints and the eighty million projects needing our attention, I had resigned myself to the probability that I wouldn't be able to have flower beds this year. 

 

But then Mike and the kids spent the better portion of two Saturdays taking rocks from the beds, shoveling the tractor-scoop fulls of soil and compost that Mike kept driving over from by the barn, hurling rocks out of those piles, and spreading soil out. 

Mike came with me to choose out a million flowers for my annual flower bed by the front porch. Cosmos and Zinnias, lantanas and dahlias, marigolds and snapdragons. 

And a few days later I found black-eyed susan, coneflower and poppy starts for my perennial garden by the garage. 

Since then, many of my green, lovely, leafy starts have been wilting and dying. (Weep.) Was it "transplant shock"? Was I overwatering? Was I underwatering? Was there too much manure in all the loads we mixed in from the farm? I'd researched full-sun plants and chosen varieties I knew were hardy (knowing how hot west facing areas can get in our summers here). I'd bought worm castings and carefully added them to each and every hole to soften the transition for my little plants. 

By Sunday night--when freezing temperatures had crept into our forecast and Mike and Jesse had helped me haul buckets and rocks and posts and tarps to put over every already-struggling plant, I was thinking sadly to myself, "And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard wept, and said ... What more could I have done for my vineyard?"

Not enough dunging, Mike teased.

Perhaps I ought to have tried grafting, Abe suggested.

Who knows, but our two nights of freezing are past, and we shall see what remains to thrive. I suppose nobody ever became a master gardener in a day. :(

Above are some gardening-weary kids at Costco where we fed them all pizza and hotdogs. Below we have Daisy pulling the truck from its stuck location in the pig pasture.

But! There was more to Mother's Day than ring watches and hours of potentially fruitless gardening! Daisy and Mette made a delicious dinner (and Daisy made eclairs!--those and lemon pie are probably my two favorite desserts [odd for someone who generally wants pure chocolate base to everything]). And we drove it all down to my mom's for a Mother's Day dinner at Polk's End!

That was a happy way to spend Mother's Day!

And, because a Mother's Day post seems as fitting a place as any for this type of news: After decades (literally decades) of announcing my own pregnancies, we have entered a new stage of life. 

Now I am announcing a daughter's pregnancy! 

Goldie and Wyatt are expecting a baby boy this September. 

As I unpacked things in the new house and wondered if I really still needed toys in the kitchen pantry and board books on the bookshelf, it was fun to think, "Well, of course I do. Just as my kids are beginning to outgrow some of these things, grandkids are coming along to take their use up again.")

And to end, a lovely mother's hairstyle (compliments of Starling).

Misc Post Number 847 (I have no actual idea how many misc posts like this I have)

"Eclairs are one of the main things I've cried over." -- Daisy

Penny: Let's talk about someone else's gifts.

Daisy: I don't have gifts. Only gifs.

Me: Gifs with a t. Their like gifts ... only different.

Speaking of Anders:

Friday both Summer and Mette had friends over. And ... I was mostly unaware of them! There was the occasional peel of laughter, someone asking to use my phone to attach to the Bluetooth speaker for music, someone asking to use my phone to take photos, a shout over some move gone wrong in a game, one of the girls coming to pilfer some sort of snack or to ask if they could take the 4-wheeler down the small lane just south of the farm. (Where, wholly unrelated I am sure, a boy their age lives. [The answer was no.]) But! Other than that, I was pretty much unaware of them all. Not that I am averse to seeing or hearing my kids' friends, but if you'd only experienced kids having friends over at the rental, you would understand how delightful this new arrangement is!

Abe and Kenya were recently in DC again. (In one day they went to about 6000 museums--including the National Bonsai Museum, which I hadn't known was a place that existed.)

Little Hansie reading his scriptures before bed. 

All the birds I heard while Mike and I were sitting on the front porch at dusk the other evening. 

The sword Jesse 3d printed and somehow ... using ... science (?) made light up.

I nearly always feel just a rush of happiness when I see a large number of my kids congregated to one spot. Here are several instances of "kids at the kitchen table for various reasons".

This was for a Come Follow Me lesson. They were supposed to be drawing the wilderness tabernacle of the Children of Israel. But there seems to be a lot of other drawings on those papers.

Dinner one evening with Abe and Kenya up for a few days.

(I was leaving them for a Relief Society dinner, so they got ... hotdogs.)

Kids all gathered drawing who knows what. (Penny likely drew Squidward [as she seems to feel compelled to do when doodling with the kids]. If you don't know who Squidward is, well, just remain in that happy state of innocence.)

Kenya was working remotely while they were here, but the girls still managed to wrangle her in to doing their hair every day.

We are boggled that Kenya, who grew up with nary a sister in sight, can do hair so well while I, who have had daughters about for 24 years, can still barely manage the loosest of French braids.

Speaking of hair. Mette and her two best friends did this. It is temporary. She was delighted.

Abe took his brothers fishing while he and Kenya were here. I like little Hansie getting to be a part of the group of older boys. 

Starling. If little boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dog tails", she is composed of cats, pink, and apples. It doesn't rhyme as well but is entirely true. (She truly eats multiple apples every single day.)

Starling had a good cry when she couldn't get the tiny pack of bubbles open in time to blow them in the line formed to send off the departing bride and groom at her cousin's wedding a week ago. I told her we would take pictures of her blowing the bubbles later, and it seemed to soothe her. But she was not content with the few I snapped above, and dinner was needing made, so I coaxed Penny to come take over my camera. She did the fun ones below looking through an orange safety cone and some slats of some sort. Very clever. 

Summersby. She and Mette have been staying up late more and more often with the older kids. It takes a toll.

Mike and I were looking through a box of his old things recently and chance upon this certificate advancing him to a purple belt in karate. He was probably age 10. And look whose signature is on it! 

My dad's! 

My dad was a very involved in karate--earning something like a fourth-degree black belt (also losing hearing in one ear from an intense kick to the ear during a sparring match that did permanent damage). 

I knew Mike's family often went to the same dojo (Jerry LeRoll's dojo) when Mike was a kid, but I didn't remember my dad was chairman of the board there. Fun to think of him signing this kids' certificate not knowing it was his own future son-in-law! 

(And have we talked about how much my dad liked Mike before? Of course we have. He was a huge fan. Wanted me to marry him from the start. Daisy was at my mom's last week and happened to read this from one of my dad's old family letter/journal entries: "Nanners continues to go out with an exceptionally fine young man--a returned missionary named Mike Harris, the son of our good friends Al and Gayle who are members of our study group. Al is also on the faculty at WSU, former Dean of the School of Business and Economics and just all around fine people. Young Mike is one of the nicest most likeable guys I have ever met and exceptionally thoughtful re Nanners.")

Going through Mike's things also produced this photo of Mike at maybe 15 or 16.

It prompted this reply from Abe:

"Whoah! I haven't seen many pictures of teenage dad. I was under the impression that he only wore sensible working shoes, but those are pretty snazzy."

And this from Jesse (regarding a policeman from Mike's youth--who I'm sure Mike had very few run-ins with. Haha.):

"Dang! Don't let officer pedelski catch you on that!"

Mette took a few pictures of some of her pets for a school thing the other day.

Almond:

Holly and Rosie:

Pig:

Goldie came over to join Daisy and Penny for a hike one afternoon. (Daisy has been home since graduating with her master's at the end of May. Sadly for us, she will be leaving again to start her fancy pants new job at the first of June.)

Also, I don't think that's how you are supposed to hold a snake. ... 

The End.